


Like You're Less Than

by FlirtyHale



Category: One Direction
Genre: High School AU, Self Harm, trigger warning, ziam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlirtyHale/pseuds/FlirtyHale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn Is A Football Jock (captain) While Liam Is The School Nerd Who Get’s Bullied And Self Harms. He Finds Out One Day That He Has To Tutor Zayn…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like You're Less Than

Liam drags himself into the biology classroom, his arms wrapped tightly around his books. His black rimmed glasses are perched on the bridge of his nose as he stares at the ground. He’s early to class like always, most of his fellow peers call him a goodie goodie but truthfully he’s scared; scared of them. ” And then we snogged in the basement bathroom for almost an hour!” the solid cackling voice rings through out the classroom followed by the loud rough laugh coming from the captain of the footie team, Zayn Malik who is unbelievably drop dead gorgeous but is best mate with some of the biggest arseholes in the whole school. He’s sitting on top of one of the desks at the back of the classroom, his hair spiked and fidgeting with the sleeve of his leather jacket as he talks to Louis Tomlinson, his team mate. Liam slides into one of the desks in the front row, not daring to go anywhere near the two obnoxious lads he can’t believe their in here too, he wants to leave but it’s too late they’ve made his presence known with the sudden silence and quiet snickers. He can even hear Louis hit Zayn in the arm and say “let’s give this dweb a hard time yeah?” Zayn doesn’t even have time to respond as Louis is already standing a few feet behind Liam.  
“Hey glasses. Can we help you?” Louis shouts at him, Liam tries to ignore him “Excuse me I’m tryin’ to talk to you!”  
Liam slowly turns around, pulling his sleeves over his hands and looking at Louis dead in the eye scared out of his wits. He knows what they’re capable of, setting his locker on fire, stealing his clothes when he was in the shower after gym then hanging his them from the schools flag pole, stealing his bike and selling it for alcohol money, tormenting him, spreading lies like he’s no real human and was made in some sort of lab. They make him feel as worthless as humanly possible.   
“So are you going to help us pass this test or what?”  
“I-I-I” Liam stutters   
“You wouldn’t want us to fail would you now?” Louis purr’s walking up next to him  
“n-n-no, of course not”  
“Good, now when the test starts you signal to us what each answer is. Got it?”  
Liam nods and swallows thickly.

The test begins and Liam hand signals Louis and Zayn the answers for each question, feeling guilty for every question he gives to them. The guilt courses through him the whole day and when he’s walking home- far enough away from school where no one will see him, he begins to cry.

~

The next day Liam strolls into the dreaded classroom, Mr. Peppers sitting at his desk.  
“Liam can I speak to you for a second?” He asks. Liam’s throat is in his stomach, feeling the room begin to close around his neck and slowly suffocate him.  
“Sure” he chokes out and follows his teacher out into the hallway. Mr. Peppers closes the door and stands in front of Liam “I wanted to ask if you how you feel about peer tutoring?”  
“um…” the worry of him getting caught for helping out Zayn and Louis vanishes and he’s looking at his teacher with a confused expression. His marks are fine at least he thinks they are, but maybe he’s the only one struggling now and panick begins to rush in “It’s good I guess”  
“Are you willing to help out someone in this class bump their grades up? I would even consider giving your mark a raise?”  
the panic is replaced with confidence and Liam has a small smile on his lips.   
“Sure, I’ll do it” he blurts out  
“Great you’ll be meeting with Zayn Malik tomorrow after school for your first session”  
And then his world stops. He began shaking his head and gaping at his teacher trying to spit out some kind of ‘no I don’t want to if it him’ but it was too late- he had agreed and now he’s stuck. 

 

Of course Louis had found out and then the rest of the football team and then the whole school. He could hear the giggles and the snide comments every corner he turned.   
"you think you’re so smart, gay boy"  
"tutoring more like you just want alone time with the footy cap"  
"you’re not gonna get any. Ever. Fag"  
The teachers could careless because this is high school none of it matters anyway. Oh but it does, it all does.

 

Liam runs home as soon as the bell rings, he bolts threw the front door and up to his room hot tears stinging his cheeks as he slams the door close. He opens his bedside table drawer and finds the small blade he had taken from his dad’s office. It’s a thin piece of metal that’s sharp at one end,probably  
Use for opening letters or packages. Its a small blade but the destruction it can do could be deadly.   
He sits down on his bed, hand shaking, tears watering as he slides the metal across his wrist.  
He hisses under his breath as the blood puddles on his wrist from the inch long cut it hurts but it’s a good hurt. He does it a could more times and then throws the blade back into his drawer and curls under his blanket. A Kleenex wrapped around his wrist. His heart beating rapidly as he drifts off into multiple nightmares.

The next day is like the day before, there are still comments and laughing but he tries hard to put it past him. He walks into the bathroom and looks under the stalls. There’s no one. Quickly he lifts up his sleeve to see the five deep cuts on his wrist, they’re still fresh looking which isn’t good if someone saw but he doubts anyone will. He hears the door open and quickly pulls his sleeve down he turns and Zayn’s standing a meter in front of him. They both stop and just stare at either other, it’s awkward at first but then the tension leaves because it’s just them no extra eyes or voices.  
“hi” Zayn says quietly  
“hi” Liam says back  
“um so today…after school. You wanna meet me by the bike racks and then we’ll walk over to my house?” he asks  
“um yah sure” Liam nods he feels like he’s about to pass out  
“okay, sounds good” Zayn nods too and passes by him. Liam pretty much runs out of the restroom, stopping in the middle of the empty hall way, feeling likes he’s being surrounded but there’s no one. Quickly turning the corner he runs into a storage closet and just to falls to the ground. A mop and bucket staring at him he takes his glasses off, rubs his eyes and just breathes. It’s the first real time he really feels defeated.

After school Liam waits for Zayn by the bike racks and Zayn doesn’t show up for 20 minutes after the bell had rung he also reeks of cigarettes.  
“you waiting long?” Zayn points his chin at him  
“nope” Liam lies and they walk silently to where ever Zayn’s house is. It’s about a 10 minute walk and they arrive in front of an old Tuscan style house that is huge in Liam’s eyes.  
“this is my house” Zayn tells him and they walk up the sidewalk Zayn in front of Liam. Zayn opens the door for them and closes it as Liam enters  
“My mum isn’t home so we have the place to ourselves do you want something to drink?” Liam is kind of shocked that Zayn is actually being nice to him, actually letting him step foot into his home because he was sure they were just gonna go to the school’s library.  
"We’ll go upstairs to the bonus room" Zayn says quietly, both lads feeling incredibly awkward.

Liam walks behind Zayn, his backpack slung on his shoulder they get upstairs and Zayn sits in the couch watching as Liam begins taking out all his textbooks and binders. Time to get to work.

***  
It’s been three hours and the tension has fallen. Liam is laughing along to one of Zayn’s lame jokes and Zayn is smiling blissfully at him as he laughs. Liam wants to know so bad what he is thinking right now. Liam’s laughter dies down and his face is red and his rib cage hurts he doesn’t even remember what he was laughing at anymore but Zayn is still eying him and has that smitten smile plastered on his lips Liam can’t help but blush thinking they are having a moment but it’s ruined when Zayn asks him a question about what they were studying before.  
Liam enjoys this peer tutoring because watching Zayn get angry when he doesn’t understand something is definitely worth all the anxiety before. He’s leaning over Zayn explaining the differences between osmosis and diffusion, watching Zayn’s head nod along to his words, looking like he somewhat understands, ‘it’s a start’ Liam thinks. He fixes his sleeve and goes back to point at some diagram in the textbook “okay so you see-” he looks at Zayn and Zayn’s expression has fallen completely, he’s looking up at Liam with big glassy brown eyes it’s like he might cry.  
"What’s wrong?" Liam asks carefully  
"Y-y-your wrist?" His eyes are shiny like thin glass is covering them.  
"I-I-I-" Liam sputters, he doesn’t want to have this conversation especially with Zayn.  
“is that because of me and my friends?” he asks. and Liam stays silent yanking his sleeve down  
"I’m a complete dumbass" Zayn yells getting up from his chair his hands going to rub his face “i-i shit fuck” Liam just stands back away from Zayn feeling the anger just raid off the boy.   
" my friends are all jackasses, school seems to be getting tougher and tougher and I don’t even like football y’know what I really want to do?!” he asks Liam as if he would have any idea, he just shakes his head ‘no’   
“ I want to draw and sing but no that would make me ‘gay’ well sucks for them because I already am!”  
He slaps his hand over his mouth regretting his words.  
Liam just stands there and stares at him he wants to comfort Zayn but is unsure of where he stands with him right now.

"I-I that i didn’t mean i didn’t mean that" His voice is suffering like he’s being pulled under water.  
"it’s okay-"  
"No it’s not!" Zayn shouts his hands threading through his hair. Liam is unsure if he should even stay right now. Zayn’s eyes lock with Liam’s and he slowly walks closer to the boy, his breathing is calm and he’s actually managed to relax himself a tiny bit.  
“Can you come here for a second” Zayn asks waving his hand over to Liam for him to walk closer to him. Liam slowly walks closer and Zayn grabs on to Liam’s wrists and flips them over they both look down at the deep cuts along his forearm.  
Liam doesn’t want to look up at Zayn he just keeps his head down staring at his soon to be scars. He feels so lost and vulnerable. “I’m sorry” Zayn whispers the heartfelt sorrow in his voice could be heard from miles away.   
Liam nods “It shouldn’t be you who needs to apologize”  
"no it’s me…all those times those jack arses teased you and did cruel things I should’ve stuck up for you! I shoulda said something"  
"Zayn" Liam sighs "that’s over and done with now- we can move past this okay"  
Zayn takes a deep breath still standing a couple feet away from Liam but looking at him dead in the eye with some kind of sincerity.  
"I have one more thing to say- but you have to promise me that if you tell anyone I’ll ruin your life even more" and Liam knows that a joke because Zayn has a small smile sitting on his lips  
"Okay out with it then"  
"I- kind of fancy you. Ever since the first day of school. I seen you and I knew I just had to get you some how but I was so scared of letting anyone else know of my... likings. It would ruin me for the rest of high school" He sighs dropping his head “and if my parents ever found out that i'm into boys and not girls” he takes a deep breath and his head falls in front of him “i don’t even want to imagine what they would do” Liam can tell Zayn is crying so he gently pulls him into a hug and Zayn takes to his body like a life line. “I’m sorry again, if you want to leave-"  
"Zayn stop" Liam blurts out "I’m not going to run, I’m not going to tell everyone, I just want to ask you if” and Liam takes a deep breath “if you’re willing to make this work?"  
"huh?" Zayn looks at him confusingly and Liam just takes a leap of faith and intertwines theirs hands together "Ooooh" Zayn hums amusingly   
"if you want this as much as I do, I’m willing to try"  
"Only if you stop this” Zayn rubs his thumb over Liam’s cuts.  
Liam lets out a shaky breath his eyes begin to water and he nods, biting on his lips trying to hold in his tears as a lump grows in his throat.  
"is it okay if I kiss you?" Zayn asks  
Liam blushes “only if you want”  
"oh trust me I want" he whispers along Liam lips just ghosting over as he quickly presses his mouth to Liam’s. It’s quick but it’s just enough.  
"now let’s get you prepared for this test" Liam says chipperly  
"hey “Lii?"   
"yah?"  
"I failed that test on purpose so you’d have to tutor me"  
Liam just rolls his eyes “Asshole”


End file.
